She did not exactly draw her skirts aside with
her hand as she passed me, but she did it inwardly;
that is, I imagined she did from the expression
of her face, and the next day she must have
fumigated the house, for when I went by an awful
smell of sulphur was coming from it. She is a
low bender and bower in church at the mention
of a name belonging to one she believes a Prince
in disguise, who in another life will receive her
into His kingdom, and whom she professes to
follow in the expectation of being rewarded for so
doing, but her head is held high when she doesn't
care to see the lowly ones He came to give light
and life to. I don't mean she doesn't give old
clothes and food and sometimes a little wood to
old Mrs. Snicker, who can't move, from
rheumatism, but she would no more speak other than
stiffly to some of the people I know here than she
would go in for suffrage. She doesn't realize she
is a living woman. She thinks she is an Ancestor.
For years she has forbidden Taylor French to
come to her house, and Amy has to see him elsewhere.
She has seen a good deal of him lately, Amy
has. Taylor doesn't live in Twickenham Town
now. He is living in North Carolina and has a
good position, and is able to get married (I know
because I asked him), and any minute day or
night in the past eighteen months in which Amy
would have agreed he would have married her
and taken her away, but Amy wouldn't agree.
Things have been dragging along this way so
long that the nerves of both are frazzled out, and
there's nothing to hope for but death, and, of
course, it isn't respectful to think too hopefully
of death and a grandmother. And then I popped
in and gave things a little push and the curtain dropped.
The way it dropped was this. I mean the way
they got married. Taylor was in town the last
two weeks in August, and, as everybody invited
him to their parties, he and Amy managed to see
a good deal of each other (also the seeing wasn't
altogether at places where other people were
around). But she wasn't allowed to meet him
on the square or to receive letters from him
straight. And sometimes, if he wanted to say
something in a hurry, or send her candy or a new
book, or any of the usuals, he had to give a signal
by throwing pebbles on her window at night,
and then she would throw out a string and he
would tie the thing to it and she would haul
up, and the Personage, who was usually asleep,
would be none the wiser. The Personage is deaf,
which is a great help.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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